He was riding on the bus to the place that he thought he would never visit, not in his current status of course. It had already been 8 hours on the road, 10 hours since he drank water and 13 hours since he went to the toilet last. It was rough but that was the kind of system he had built with his own hands. The bus was full of men who looked exactly like him, with perfectly shaved hair and a striped prison robe.
Ironically, ‘Fight the Power’ by Public Enemy was playing in his head. He has always been very fond of rap music, not that hedonistic rap about money, sports cars and chicks, but rap as a political statement. Lyrics made him feel better; the idea of an inevitable end of the rival Western Empire brighter, but after some time he had to ban the whole genre since the amount “wealthy rap” as he called it. If it reached a certain point of popularity, it could potentially affect the pure minds of his citizens.
Like all ministers, his best friend – the Minister of Defense–was overweight. They used to have discussions about music–the guy was a music snob who couldn’t stand anyone but Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and always made fun of Leader’s music taste. After he found out that Leader – when everybody asleep – was watching Adam Sandler movies to which he had a complete access since the vault with all confiscated western “art” was beneath the Leader’s palace–it got even worse. “Soon you will be as stupid as those people in the Western Empire”, he heard every time he met the Minister of Defense.
But their differences in music or movies weren’t the reasons why that person was occupying his head all the way to the prison. Thanks to his “friend”, he was to spend the rest of his life in a tiny cell, eating shit and cleaning dirty toilets every morning. That son of a bitch.
Photo by Mitch Lensink on Unsplash
As he was entering his prison cell he was trying hard to remember how many familiar faces he might meet there: his first Minister of Culture, who turned out to be homosexual, that’s for sure. The death penalty was too much so he decided to put him in jail. In fact, he even thought that he was doing a good thing for the poor guy. Also, his second Minister of Culture-for bribery, his third – for being too liberal (that guy smoked weed at nights). He realized that the people in charge of culture were always shady and brought a lot of trouble. “I should have abolished that position and done it myself”, he thought. But, when this thought came to his mind, it was too late. Now, the only thing he was in charge of was his cell.